


If You Could Only See

by endquestionmark



Series: Howl [1]
Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes John Luther wakes up and wants to howl.  A look at what Luther's world would be like if there were - to be brief - werewolves, though it isn't nearly that simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Could Only See

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is what happens when a biomed major writes werewolf fic. This owes a lot to [Howl](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZweDwbJ_Ic), by Florence + The Machine, and the [Newsflesh](http://miragrant.com/newsflesh.php) trilogy, by Mira Grant. There's definitely going to be more fic here.

Sometimes John Luther wakes up and just feels _angry_ , so angry at the world. It’s a smoggy, filthy, gritty world, a life in noir, stark shadow and light flickering on his curtains as a car passes. Sometimes he wants to run and run until he’s left the stink of it behind, and sometimes he wants to set it ablaze, watch it char and smolder down to embers, down to cinders, wants the smoke to sting in his eyes and lungs, wants to breathe the ash deep.   
  
  
Sometimes John Luther wakes up and feels nascent claws straining beneath his fingernails, smells cigarette smoke from several hundred yards away; these are the mornings when he gets up, drowns his senses in coffee, splashes cold water on his face until the sweet sharp ache pressing at his fingertips subsides.   
  
  
Sometimes John Luther wakes up and wants to _howl_.   
  
  
++   
  
  
Alice Morgan is brought in on a brisk Tuesday, shaking and blood-spattered. The moment she steps into the room, Justin Ripley looks up as if pulled by some invisible string.   
  
  
John crouches down by his desk, below the edge of the cubicle. “Here,” he says, waving a hand vaguely in front of Justin’s face. “Ripley, oi, what’ve you got?”   
  
  
Ripley turns back to him almost unwillingly. "Salt," he says, "that's tears, I think, and cotton, that's her clothes, and - there's a lot of blood, human, but there's dog in there too -" It's as if the telling makes it real, and he digs a hand into John's shoulder hard, nails catching on his shirt. John feels them prick his skin in a neat line of four and a third stab under his collarbone, and he waits for Justin to realize it.   
  
  
"Fuck, sorry," Justin says, and releases him, flexing his right hand until the jagged keratin tips sink back into his fingers. "I didn't realize I was doing that - I'll just go for a breather." He stands, still shaking his hand, and John knows that feeling, the one where you want to reclaim your body. He wishes he doesn't.   
  
  
By all rights, he shouldn't; he's consistently tested as negative for Day-Vaughan, and has done for the last six years, which is where the real inconsistency is - he's a silent carrier, showing none of the symptoms and showing up on none of the tests. Most people in the Met test positive sooner or later - it's probably because of the higher incidence of crime among deevees, those who both test positive and exhibit symptoms. After long enough around infected blood you tend to slip up; maybe you have a scrape or blood splatters a bit too close to a mucous membrane, but eventually most coppers end up deevee. Shortly afterwards they end up unemployed, as well, though with a generous pension. _Not worth it_ , John thinks. _Never worth it_.   
  
  
John remembers the fourth body, the fourth little girl in a trash bag in a tip, and he remembers how there was blood literally everywhere; Henry Madsen was still perfecting his technique, evidently, though he'd already learned to use peppermint oil to throw the Met deevees off the scent. _Madsen was a tricky bastard_ , John thinks, without the usual grudging respect he holds for tricky bastards. He wasn't as tricky then, though, and Teller had tracked the scent right through two parking lots and an open-air market without even fully shifting, that was how much blood there was.   
  
  
When John pulled her out of the bag he had gloves on, and the blood, already coagulating, smeared across the green nitrile in a hideous streak; by the time they'd finished with photographers and cordoned off the tip, he was so tired he wanted to sleep for days.   
  
  
Later, he finds the tear in his gloves from a broken bottle perhaps, or a rusty car fender; later he looks in the mirror and sees a streak of the same dark crumbling blood above his eye. He never knows which it is, and it probably doesn't matter. It certainly doesn't matter for the girl. The medical examiner finds the baby claws in her fingers and declares her deevee. John waits for the symptoms and the sectioning.   
  
  
Neither of them arrive, as it turns out. Three months later, Ripley tracks peppermint oil into an abandoned factory and John follows Madsen in, chases him over creaking stairs and rusty catwalks, and in the dark there, in the continual sighing decay of the scaffolding, Madsen looks up at John standing over him in the dirty half-light from the broken roof and decides that death is preferable to whatever he sees there.   
  
  
They release him for the night once Madsen is in intensive care; he knows they'll call him in for questioning in the morning. He knows he'll be sectioned.   
  
  
John looks at himself in his bathroom mirror - he's battered, eyes sunken, but that's nothing new - and then he _snarls_ , as if Madsen were staring him in the eye again, as if he had a chance to do it all over again, pull him up to the walkway, step on his fingers and hear them crack.   
  
  
The light is dim and yellow, but even so he can see the secondary canines and incisors slide down from his gums, gleaming faintly in the mirror.   
  
  
_Well, that's it_ , he thinks, _deevee, I am, and there go the next six months of my life in sectioning and therapy_.   
  
  
The next morning they take him in for blood tests and eye scans. He sits in the sterile blue waiting room and watches the nurses in their scrubs and wonders if he'll start thinking of them as game. It's one of the biggest surprises of his life when he gets released two hours later with a clean medical record. He does end up in therapy after all, but that's - not as bad as it could be, not by a long shot.   
  
  
When he snarls, he still sees the teeth. He tries to tone down the snarling a bit; next time he gets angry at work he throws his keyboard through the window instead. It's hardly an improvement but people seem to get used to it.   
  
  
A month after that he begins to feel claws pushing at his fingertips, but only when he's angry or stressed - when Zoe calls, he leaves scratch marks all down the side of his mobile. He refuses to cover his hands with gloves, however - that's one risk he no longer has to worry about. Gossip over coffee is that DCI Luther has a death wish; that's not all because of the gloves, anyway, so he lets that one pass.   
  
  
Sometimes he wakes up with the taste of blood in his mouth, sometimes with his fingers digging into the sheets, but as long as its his blood, lips chewed ragged, as long as his claws stay beneath his skin, he's him, he's John Luther, and he can outrun the virus, he can, god _dammit_.   
  
  
++   
  
  
She sits in the small quiet room, no longer shaking, and he can barely hear her breathing, even when he strains his hearing, even when he feels his ears shift a little in her direction.   
  
  
“I gave a statement,” she says, low. “Is there - anything else I can do?”   
  
  
“Not much,” John says, rubbing at the back of his neck. It’s calculated to put her at ease, but she doesn’t look up; she doesn’t seem to notice anything. All perfectly normal, of course. “Could you tell me about your parents? Basic medical history, relationships with neighbors, that sort of thing.”   
  
  
“They were both negative, if that’s what you mean,” she says. “My mother - was lovely; she was always kind, and my father was very - generous. He was the one who bought me Fidelis.”   
  
  
_Fidelis?_ John thinks, and then remembers Ripley’s claws digging into his shirt. _Dog blood, of course._ “Was Fidelis trained as a guard dog?”   
  
  
“No,” she says, “he was a family pet -” her voice catches, and she turns away.   
  
  
John yawns, half-covering it with her hand, and she looks up for the first time. Her red lips curl a little. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m just going to go get water - would you - like anything?”   
  
  
“Water would be lovely,” she says, and he stands and shakes the silence and the stillness of the room off as the door closes behind him.   
  
  
“Anything?” Teller says. _What do I say?_ John thinks. _She’s completely immune to any sort of mirroring behaviour and as a result is most likely devoid of empathy; when she snarls I can see her secondary canines slide down and therefore she’s probably a silent carrier like myself, so why don’t you x-ray her hands and dental work and then do the same for me and then I can get sectioned?_   
  
  
“She’s very quiet,” he says, “probably the shock still. I’m going to talk to her for a little longer.”   
  
  
++   
  
  
He sits down and pushes the plastic cup across the table.   
  
  
“Show me your teeth,” he demands without preamble.   
  
  
“I test negative,” she says, looking up. She grimaces, lips pulling back from her teeth. “Will that suffice?”   
  
  
Her teeth are straight and white and blunt and human. “No,” he says. “Alice Morgan, you are a silent carrier, aren’t you?”   
  
  
“Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it,” she says. She smiles, properly this time, lips curling up at the corners like shavings of red wax.   
  
  
“Why did you do it?” John asks.   
  
  
“Do what?” Alice says. “My parents, as I’ve said, were lovely to the neighbors and very generous indeed.”   
  
  
“And both negative,” he says. “Was it Fidelis? Was he the vector?”   
  
  
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, “I’m a theoretical physicist, hardly an epidemiologist.”   
  
  
“You were extremely gifted, which was apparent from an early age,” John says, mentally skimming her record. “So your parents pushed you to succeed, but you had few peers your age - certainly no boyfriends, girlfriends -”   
  
  
“Actually, I matured very early, sexually speaking,” she cuts in. “Do continue.”   
  
  
“All right then,” he says. “You resented them for what they made you. True or false?”   
  
  
“Oh,” she says, and leans in, as if she has a secret, “I _hated_ them.”   
  
  
++   
  
  
“She’s innocent,” he says to Rose Teller, and prays to god that Alice has covered all her tracks, because he’s lying for both of them now.   
  
  
He goes home to his empty flat and stares at the phone and thinks about calling Zoe, but when he finally pulls himself together long enough to dial her number, it goes straight through to voicemail.   
  
  
That night he dreams about running until his feet are bloody and his hands are torn, and then his spine stretches and pulls, like a row of nails coming out of wood, and his jaw lengthens like a healing bruise, deep and bone-cracking and awful, and he feels the claws rip through his fingers and the pull of his teeth.   
  
  
There are voices ahead of him in the dark, and he leaps, snarls -   
  
  
\- and wakes up, tangled in bedclothes, sweating and gasping for breath.   
  
  
His fingers ache terribly, and he looks down at them in the dark to see blood running down his wrists, red ribbons smeared across the sheets, and white jagged edges pushing through the flesh. The gashes are longitudinal, all the way down the top joint of his fingers, and his nails are splitting, tearing.   
  
  
It’s only then that he realizes that it’s barely gone midnight, and he can see the blood streaks as if the lamp beside his bed were on; he stands and moves through the hallway as if dreaming, as if walking through thigh-deep water. In the hallway mirror he sees twin discs of light; _that’ll be the reflective tissue_ , he thinks, _tapetum lucidum_.   
  
  
He stands there and watches the eyeshine shift with the headlamps outside and the shadows; he doesn’t know how long it is before he makes his way back into the bedroom and sits on the bed. It’s even longer before he picks up the phone - who does he call? There’s only the one person he _can_ call.   
  
  
++   
  
  
Alice picks up on the first ring.   
  
  
“I knew you’d call,” she says, “I saw your eyes, half-mad from the blood, half-mad from my taunts.”   
  
  
“Fuck off,” he replies, though he’s more tired than anything; he certainly isn’t surprised. “God knows I hate to say it but I need your help, Alice.”   
  
  
“Of course,” she says. “I’ll be around in ten minutes; let me get my bag.”   
  
  
“You’ll be _around_?” John asks. “How do you know where I live?”   
  
  
“You fascinate me,” she says. “You are the flame to my moth, if you will. Any other questions, or can they wait?”   
  
  
“No,” he says. “But I don’t owe you for this, Alice, I won’t do any more for you than I already have.”   
  
  
“That wasn’t just for me,” she says, “that was for you too,” and then she hangs up, leaving him to listen to white noise before he snaps his phone shut and flings it at his pillow, burying his head in his hands, sinking into the sticky metallic scent of drying blood.   
  
  
++   
  
  
It actually only takes her seven minutes; John knows because he watches the red digits on the clock by his bed tick past, counting seconds in his head, and the lines burn themselves into his eyes. He sees them long after he looks away, a sick glow against the dark.   
  
  
Suddenly he has this sense that somebody else is in the hallway; perhaps it’s the dry, faint scent of lanolin. He looks up and she’s there, standing in the doorway, carrying a duffel bag and a plastic shopping bag. “You called,” she said. “I came, like a good friend.”   
  
  
“You came because it means I owe you,” John says. “We aren’t friends. The only thing we share is silent carrier status and a murder investigation -”   
  
  
“- in which you covered up facts,” she says. “If that doesn’t make us friends, what does?”   
  
  
“Maybe not meeting over the cooling bodies of your parents and dog,” he says. “The dog named _Faithful_ who infected you.”   
  
  
“Allegedly infected me,” she says. “You’re still DI Luther, even if you do have claws.”   
  
  
She crosses the room to kneel by him, folding her legs beneath her and lifting his hand, turning it palm up. “Bad dream?” she asks, not waiting for a response. “Are you likely to have more?”   
  
  
John just looks at her, head tilted to the side. “If you’re likely to continue experiencing amplification to this degree, you’re probably going to tear any sutures I put in. You should also be feeling somewhat feverish about now.”   
  
  
It’s true - John’s head feels as though it’s stuffed with cotton wool. “I suppose so,” he says grudgingly. “And?”   
  
  
“That’s your immune system fighting down the Day-Vaughan,” she says. “Putting it back in its place as a dormant virus. You won’t always end up with this sort of reaction, though; as your body gets used to the infection, it’ll become less and less severe. Your immune system will mould itself around the symptoms.” Her voice is very soft now, as if she’s talking about something sacred and not a twist of protein-wrapped DNA.   
  
  
“So I’ll still have the -” John waves a hand, still uncomfortable. “The claws, but not the hangover?”   
  
  
“Not strictly accurate,” she says, “but it’ll do.” Alice turns his hand back over. “Flex,” she says. “Can you retract them without too much pain?”   
  
  
John tentatively curls his fingers, and a tightness he hadn’t noticed in his fingers releases. The claws slot back into his fingertips.   
  
  
“You’ll have to take care of your bones now,” Alice says, and drops a bottle beside the clock. “Supplements. You’ll also have to avoid any foreign matter as much as possible - the claws should heal into aseptic recesses, but until then avoid infection.”   
  
  
“Yes, ma’am,” John says, affecting the tone of a sulky teenager. “I’ll be sure to eat all my vegetables as well.”   
  
  
“Actually, I would avoid those,” Alice says. “Day-Vaughan wants iron, and if you don’t eat enough iron-rich foods - red meat - then it’ll take control of your body and go out to find it.”   
  
  
“You say that like you know,” John says.   
  
  
“I do,” Alice replies.   
  
  
++   
  
  
She leaves him with the bottle of pills and a dark brown bottle of liquid bandage. The chemical odor burns John’s nose when he opens the bottle, and she laughs as he sneezes again and again. “That’s intentional,” she says. “It should overwhelm your sense of smell enough to make it seem a bit dull, even for a human.”   
  
  
For now, though, John needs to let his fingers heal naturally, even if that’s considerably faster than normal thanks to the heightened activity of the virus. His hands are swollen and tingling. “Once they heal,” Alice says, “then you can start using the glue to keep people from noticing. Until then, try not to permanently maim yourself.”   
  
  
She has a particularly dry sense of humor - half the time John can’t even tell if she’s joking or not, the same sardonic smile dripping sarcasm or perhaps blood. Every so often he catches her scent, still in the room though she’s long gone - something far too light and floral for the way she moves, the way she talks, wrought iron and rose thorns and blood-red rust. Or perhaps rust-red blood. With Alice, John can never be sure, and even in the short time he’s known her, he’s noticed that she is sanguine perhaps to a fault.   
  
  
Morning is coming up already, dim and grey, and John flips open his phone to text Ripley - _sorry calling in sick will call later_. He’s most likely not going to get any sleep, so he trudges through to the kitchen and fills the electric kettle, leaving it to boil while he turns on his laptop.   
  
  
++   
  
  
John remembers having once taken a course on Day-Vaughan, much the same way he has a CPR certification and basic first aid training; regardless, it’s one thing to read a list of symptoms and another to find yourself exhibiting them sporadically. He starts with Wikipedia.   
  
  
_Day-Vaughan - a virus of unknown origin, suspected manmade based on similarities to certain strains currently only exigent in laboratories._   
  
  
Nothing new there. John was born after deevees had sunk far enough from the public consciousness that they were simply accepted in a quiet sort of way, which meant that it was long, long after all the popular conspiracy theories (aliens! terrorists! divine judgement!) had been thoroughly ridiculed and squashed.   
  
  
He moves on to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.   
  
  
_Day-Vaughan illustrates circadian rhythms, although the precise mechanism is not yet clear. It runs on a twenty-eight day cycle from minimal symptoms to maximum amplification, when high levels of DV-47β can be detected in the bloodstream and all organs. In order to maintain the physical wellness of the host, DV-47β stimulates healing processes and the sympathetic nervous system. During maximum amplification the host exhibits non-retractable keratin claws and a secondary set of canines and incisors._   
  
  
There were stories, John remembers, that his mum used to tell him about her childhood, before Day-Vaughan ever happened. She used to watch old movies with him before the word “werewolf” was inconsiderate and inaccurate. It seems to John as if it wasn’t so inaccurate after all.   
  
  
The kettle clicks in the kitchen and he goes to make himself tea. When he pours the water into his mug it splashes and he pulls his hand back quickly, scalded, and runs it under the cold tap, which is when he notices the pull of the tendons. His claws are out again.   
  
  
John sighs and considers that perhaps Zoe was right; perhaps he should consider investing in anger management after all.   
  
  
++   
  
  
That night he looks out the window, heart pounding for no good reason, and watches the bright disk of the moon climb over the office buildings. It’s almost bright enough to hurt his eyes, and he closes the curtains, which changes absolutely nothing. He would sleep if he could - he’s been awake for over forty-eight hours straight - but there’s no hope of that, so he climbs up to the roof instead, sits and watches the night, the streaks of headlights and brake lights, the orange pools of the streetlamps.   
  
  
His phone vibrates in his pocket.   
  
  
_Howl_ , it says. One message from Alice Morgan. _I hate to reinforce a stereotype but I can see you up there on the roof. I thought it was only fair to tell you that I’m on my way up._   
  
  
_Considerate of you to not give me a heart attack_ , he texts back, claws barely pricking the keypad.   
  
  
A minute later she appears on the fire escape. It’s quiet and calm up on the roof but the faintest breeze whispers around them. Her hair looks like flame in the moonlight, flickering, and she comes to sit beside John.   
  
  
They sit, side by side, for a while, and the city ticks on, and the moon rises and the stars wheel. John can see the stars now for the first time in a long time - they’re just pinpricks compared to the vast smog of London light, but they’re there. He wonders if this is why Alice looks up at the sky - because the city is burning and brilliant and filthy, and the stars are far-off and cold and crystal.   
  
  
“You’re thinking,” she says, brushing two fingers down his jaw. “I can hear it, John.” Her fingers are cold, or perhaps it’s her claws. It’s probably her claws. Alice is the sort to kiss and kill; John’s not even sure if she sees a difference between the two. He’s not sure if he does anymore either.   
  
  
He doesn’t kiss her.   
  
  
She doesn’t kill him.   
  
  
The moon wheels past.


End file.
